Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

5. Foreign workers
a) In the last twenty years, millions of foreigners have been recruited and summoned to the
Federal Republic of Germany because the German economy needed the manpower. Foreign
workers have contributed to the increase of our prosperity. Today (1982), some 4.700.000
foreigners live among us. Of these, around two million are employed and 240.000 unemployed.
1.096.000 are children and young people under fifteen years of age. The high number
of German and foreign unemployed shows that the economic situation has worsened. This is
probably the reason why in many circles of the German population a certain change of mood
with respect to foreign employees and their families is recognizable, which expresses itself in
xenophobia and at time even in hostility to foreigners. Worries about the economic future are
projected on the 'foreigners'. One should guard, of course, against exaggerations. The majority
of the German people wish to live peacefully together with foreigners. In particular, there is
hardly any hostility against foreigners in factories. Love of the German people and of German
culture can be fostered only by accepting one another, not by marking themselves off from
foreigners. It would also have unfavorable consequences on German exports if the impression
were to arise abroad that a negative attitude towards foreigners was spreading in Germany.
b) According to the principles of Catholic social teaching, two tasks follow:
First, an attitude of mutual understanding and approach between Germans and foreigners must
be awakened and fostered. Second, appropriate institutions are to be created in the realm of
the school and educational system. The foreigners living among us should not become a
Fourth Estate who stand on the lowest tier of the social pyramid and whose children cannot
become doctors, teachers, jurists, engineers or priests. It is a Christian duty to prevent that
with all one's strength.
There is talk of the 'integration' of foreigners. This descriptive concept can mean three things:
First, one can call a foreigner 'integrated' when he or she masters the language, has found an
occupation and a dwelling, and is able to manage among us, but apart from that has the intention
of returning to his or her native land.
Second, another form of 'integration' is present when a foreigner who has mastered our language
~d has found a source of income among us has acquired German citizenship, but apart
from that adheres to the culture and customs of his or her nation. In Brazil, many German
immigrants have behaved in this way.
Third, 'integration' is most advanced when a foreigner not only acquires citizenship, but also
accepts the language and the culture of his or her new home- land. This is the case with most
German immigrants to the United States in the last century.
The foreigners who live in Germany are protected by the basic rights of our constitution. It
contradicts this right, to name but one example, if a foreign worker who has married during a
vacation in his native land is only allowed to bring his wife to Germany after three or four
years. Parents also have a right to rear their children, and the children have a claim to live in
the family of their parents. That holds not only for children under six years of age, but also for
growing children. These rights may not be curtailed for economic or political reasons.
6. The Total Human Integration of the Worker
Three periods can be distinguished in the fate and life awareness of the working class in the
industrial age: the period of long-suffering proletarization (first half of the nineteenth century),
the period of class-struggle solidarity (from the middle of the nineteenth century), and
the period of beginning integration into a society molded essentially by working people. The
integration is not finished. It can only be understood as a process of the whole society, one
encompassing all realms of life: integration in the social, political, cultural, professional, and
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